I have thought about an apple e-ink e-reader a coupe of times. Has Apple ever considered one? If not, what is or could be the reason for that? Would you buy one? Do you think it could be as popular as other apple products?
I'm just curious about your thoughts about it.

I doubt Apple would ever build one. The main eInk reader companies are those who have large online bookstores. Apple has iBooks and sells books for that app, but their bookstore is tiny compared to Amazon and others. Apple has never shown much interest in competing for eBook sales, so they really have no reason to jump into the eInk reader market.

I doubt Apple would ever build one. The main eInk reader companies are those who have large online bookstores. Apple has iBooks and sells books for that app, but their bookstore is tiny compared to Amazon and others. Apple has never shown much interest in competing for eBook sales, so they really have no reason to jump into the eInk reader market.

I wouldn't think ebook sales matter much, because apple has always been about the devices and not the content. I imagine, we would be able to side-load epubs, like we are now on the ipads/iphones/etc.

Would you really want Apple to get into the eInk business when they have such lackluster performance with the iBooks App?

I think the only benefit Apple could add to the eInk market would be creating a device that fully complies with ePub3 standards. However, eInk devices wouldn't handle the video aspects...so we are stuck with an eInk that would natively support ePub.

Although I would welcome the competition in the eInk market - I don't see Apple spending the money on that kind of developement when Amazon could do it with a software patch for their kindle...

Now, if you think we could get Apple to write an app that is fully ePub3 compliant that displays well (without quirky bugs) then that would be very interesting...but they had better hurry...The Marvin app is going to beat them to the punch and it's awesome!

I can't see them doing one. The market is not that large, and prices are rock bottom now, there's no room for the margins they are used to. And most people want a no-frills device that does one job (displaying books) and excels at it, there's not much you can do to justify a premium device.

iBooks is a very nice ePub reader. It has a few quirks, but so does ADE.

iBooks may be a "nice" reader, but it's also lame, inflexible, and arrogant in enforcing its own layout choices on all readers. I find it unusable for reading books.

iBooks reminds me of Internet Explorer a lot. I believe most iBooks users are only iBooks users because they don't know any better, and because, much like Internet Explorer on Windows machines, iBooks essentially comes preloaded on iOS devices.

I enjoy the synchronicity of my apple devices. However, reading for any length of time on an iPad or iPhone tires my eyes too quickly. For this reason eink is my preferred tablet-reading method. I would love for apple to create an eink reader.